The custodians in the foreground are about the same size as the ones on top of the throne, while the emperor looks like a titan The pre-active stage of dying can last around two to three weeks. That said, there are many factors that contribute to how long the entire process of dying takes for each person, such as their illness and medications. Well this one is hard to rate. To say that there are huge expectations for this book is understatement. The first and foremost being the perpetual subplot with Oll and John, it was always terrible but it reaches new depths of pointlessness in this novel with Oll essentially declaring his plan was just to have a chat with the Emperor yeah like that was going to achieve anything at this point Horus is about to obliterate Earth and you think you can fix it by having a chat with the Emperor. I never had hopes this subplot had a point but this is pathetic.

Was book 1 too long? I don’t think so, I think Abnett pulled it off. Yes, it’s the extended director’s cut, but it’s a good director’s cut, not dross, not a slog, not some other things that could be levelled at the Horus Heresy series. First of all Jonathan Keeble does a great job bringing (so many) characters to life and capturing the mood and pace of the varied scenes. Since everybody knows how the story ends even if it is not in detail, Basilo Fo's story seems like an dead end.Dan's a fine novelist but this is not his finest work. The first third of the book feels somewhat abstract and a little depressing. Earth/Terra is dead, we get it. Except it isn't because we know the finale. The End and the Death starts much as the rest of the Siege with vignettes from the fighting on Terra which is a great way to demonstrate the global nature of the conflict. Abnett interspersed these stories with discussions from Horus on his father and brothers a Malcador talking about the Emperor. Both include great further snippets from the past and how the Emperor got to where he finds himself. Sure, it doesn't all make sense especially when they discuss pre 21st century history, but its fun watching Malcador and Horus separately talk of the weaving of the fates! So all we had to do was make it all work, make it coherent, make it fit together, fill in those gaps, and do justice to the well-known sections. You can’t let readers down by changing things, or by not giving them what they quite rightly expect to see. But readers also want to be surprised and to learn things they didn’t know. That’s a lot of hours spent planning, debating, arguing, inventing… I suppose what I’m saying is that we all knew it was a major project that would take years to complete, and we were all determined to stay the course and get it done. On the other hand, it seems genuinely unreal to finally be reaching the end. I wonder if this well tone down the purple prose. Given that he describes it as a continuation I doubt it. The use of lexiphane words spoiled my immersion. Its hard to keep in the flow of the thing if you are reading a description and have to look up what smaragdine means ( or lexiphane ).

So that’s what’s in the book, what’s good about it, what isn’t so good, and how it’s written. But that’s not all this one is, because there’s a great deal of symbolic importance to the End above and beyond it being the first half of the End itself. The End and the Death is the final, torturous step on the road the Great Crusade began. With the empire contracted to a single planet, the dream of the great work lying in ruins, the full fury of the Space Marines exhausted and turned inward to purge and scour the homeworld itself, you can’t help but see the beating heart of the novel as Dan Abnett. Not the Emperor, not Horus, not Malcador. Dan.As the body slows down to prepare for death, the metabolism slows down and requires less food. The digestive tract is also less active, which means a dying person won't feel hungry or thirsty. Dan does a amazing job of bringing together a vast cast of characters from across the series and giving them all their due. This book is telling the story we know of the end of the heresy but constantly provides fresh revelations, deep cuts to 40K lore, brand new ideas and meaningful characterization. Interesting that GW is taking inspiration from young adult novel movie adaptations. Splitting it in two is strange. What I'm curious about is what the part 1 cliffhanger will be. My money is on a fake-out death. I look forward to more of the same in Part 2. Perhaps we could get a closer look at the Warmaster’s morning routine and finally answer the question of whether he preferred his eggs scrambled or sunny side up. Scintillating. The sheer density of prose in this book makes it boring and awkward to read. Lots and nothing happens because of it. It could comfortably be half as long and still make perfect sense.